


Cease and Resist (Double Jeopardy Remix)

by apricity



Category: Mean Girls (2004)
Genre: Backstory, F/F, Femslash, Misses Clause Challenge, Post-Canon, Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-24
Updated: 2012-12-24
Packaged: 2017-11-22 05:38:57
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,007
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/606390
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/apricity/pseuds/apricity
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>If there's smoke, there must be fire somewhere. </p><p>Regina and Janis, before the 8th grade incident and after less than one semester of college.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Cease and Resist (Double Jeopardy Remix)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [tetracontakaidigon](https://archiveofourown.org/users/tetracontakaidigon/gifts).



> Prompt asked for backstory on why Regina thought Janis was a lesbian. They are just too fun not to play with.
> 
> I loved the idea of doing a now and then take on the non-platonic side of their relationship, but wasn't sure how to handle characters that would be underage for half the fic. As it is, all explicit sexual content is limited to when the characters are no longer underage and the earlier scenes are very innocent, which is hopefully appropriate given their history.

Next year she is totally flying home for the holidays, Janis thinks as she makes yet another hopeless attempt at finding a less painful position in her seat. Nine hours into the drive she’d given up on getting comfortable and changed her goal to not letting her _whole_ ass fall asleep.    

 

Her phone buzzes for the millionth time since this marathon tour of middle America embarked from Penn Station.

 

A text from Damien, again. Making sure she was planning on going to Steve Topolewski’s party with him. Again.  

 

“Yes, assuming my fellow passengers don’t stone me for excessive texting. See you in three hours”

 

Janis tucks her phone away and shoots a bright, shiny _fuckyou_ smile at the woman scowling at her from across the aisle. She dropped the middle finger that used to complete the gesture that fall. She’d seen a middle schooler use it on a doorman and decied she was done with it. She thinks quieter, more insidious dissent suits her college-self better.

 

The woman, clearly getting the message even without the added appendage, turns to face forward with a huff.

 

So _totally_ flying next year.

 

Around October, word had popped up in the Lincoln High rumor mill (which continued to function without a hitch despite their all, you know, leaving Lincoln High) that John Kubina had come out the minute he’d set foot on a college campus. And ever since he’d gotten a mass-invite on Facebook to this stupid party, he’d been begging Janis to come with him so he might get a chance to talk to him. Janis hadn’t gotten an invite. She was apparently an outlier for not accepting all the Friend Requests that came pouring in from people she’d known her whole life once they had graduated and, she thought, never had to see each other again. Janis had caved and said she’d go, but because it was Damien asking.

 

But this party was still the thing she was looking forward to least, even less than helping her crazy grandmother make the traditional 800 Christmas cookies. Because Cady might think she established peace last year, but Janis knows better. The social anomaly that happened their senior year was just a cease-fire. Sure, all sides stopped chucking bombs, but no one had gotten rid of their arsenals. 

 

 

 

_Regina sat behind Janis on the bed, twisting heavy, wavy locks of her hair into some complicated braid. Wrappers from the candy they’d snuck from the party downstairs were spread around them and MTV’s year end top-40 countdown was on Regina’s tv. New Year’s Eve at Regina’s had been one of their traditions, even before they were old enough to stay up until midnight._

_Regina ran her fingers carefully through her friend’s hair, fixing the tangles before picking up each new piece._

_“So, what’s your new year’s resolution?”_

_Janis cocked her head to the side while she thought and Regina straightened it so she could tuck the last stray pieces behind an ear and tie the braid in place._

_“Have a boyfriend so I can kiss him at midnight,” Janis said at last._

_Regina looked over at the alarm clock beside her bed. 11:58._

_“You don’t need a boyfriend to get kissed on New Years, Janis,” she said, like she’s pointing out that leaves grow on trees._

_Janis turned to face her._

_“What, I should make out with some random guy?” she asked with a giggle that, for whatever reason, Regina wished didn’t sound so excited._

_She followed Regina’s eyes as they darted to the clock again. 11:59._

_When she looked back, Regina’s face was close to her own. Too close. But Janis paused, just for a split second, before she pulled away, suddenly stunned. Janis knew it was ridiculous; she’d always known Regina was pretty. Like, really, really, stupidly pretty. The kind of pretty that might have made Janis jealous if Regina hadn’t seemed so oblivious to it._

_But she was a different kind of pretty this close up, where Janis couldn’t focus on more than one plane of her face at a time. She glanced over the freckles on her cheeks that she could normally only see in the summer; at the tiny, white scar beside her nose that she’d gotten playing kickball in elementary school; up to eyes she would have said were blue a moment ago, but now she can see that they fade to an almost green at the edge of her now fully blown-out pupils._

_In the half second that it took for that to register Regina closed the gap between them. She pressed her lips to Janis’s. It was chaste and gentle and didn’t last for more than a few seconds before Regina pulled away, leaving Janis’s lips feeling oddly stung. Her eyes flicked up from Janis’s lips to meet her gaze, like she was asking a nervous question._

_Janis leaned forward again, resting one hand on Regina’s shoulder. Then the kisses started lasting longer, until Janis pulled back to breath._

_“This is just… practice, right?”_

_Regina pulled her hands from where they were resting on Janis’s knee and waist with a start._

_“Yeah,” she said, “of course.” The last word is barely off her lips when they come back to meet Janis’s._

 

_They slept in the same bed all the time but that night the feeling of Regina pressed against her back was making her skin zing. And, she hoped she wasn’t just imagining it because that would probably, like, mean something or whatever, she could feel Regina's heart beating hard and her breath coming shallow against her back._

 

 

Damien scopes out the scene in the Topolewski basement as he returns with drinks to where Cady and Janis are standing in a corner.

 

The three of them had seen each other and caught up since they’d gotten back. Now there was just the strange familiar/unfamiliar déjà vu feeling of standing in a room with people you never knew that well in the first place but keep finding yourself around.

 

Cady, ever the optimist, holds up her red plastic cup and attempts a toast.

 

“Ah, yes,” Janis says, glancing around the room again even though she knows it won’t look any better this time. “Nothing says ‘happy holidays’ like sad tinsel, shitty beer poured with at least fifty percent head and a group of people who are mostly just here to make sure they aren't the most pathetic one in the our graduating class.”

 

“You know, Damien, I think maybe we shouldn't have let her move to a whole city where _everyone_ is as cynical as she is...”

 

Damien shoots her one of his most deeply skeptical glances, “Um, have you met most of the country? You do realize that this is what most of these people are going to be doing for holiday parties for the rest of their lives, right?”

 

Someone across the room catches Cady’s eye and she waves them over. When Janis pulls her enormous cup back down from her face it’s all she can do to not spew the room temperature beer in her mouth all over the person in front of her.

 

Regina fucking George, wearing a pair of _jeans_ and t-shirt. Though, Janis thinks, the jeans are skanktastically tight and Regina must know how good she looks with that neckline.

 

“Hey,” she says with a smile that’s almost shy, and there’s something else different about her. Janis can’t quite put a finger on it; maybe it’s how she’s standing, hands in her pockets, hips slightly forward rather cocked to one side .

 

“Well holy fuck, look who it is.” Janis chokes out. It wasn’t exactly hostile, but it was pretty clearly not welcoming.

 

Damien doesn’t even flinch when his foot connects sharply with her shin.

 

“Ow, Damien! What the fuck?”

 

“What?”  He asks like _he_ ’s affronted. “Oh hey, it’s John. I’m just going to go and-” his voice trails off as he leaves.

 

Regina pretends to not have noticed the whole exchange by craning her neck to look around the room behind her.

 

Cady looks nervously from one to the other. “I want food. Do you guys want food?”

 

 _Oh yeah_ , Janis thinks she walks behind the two other girls, _there is totally nothing awkward about this. Nope, nothing at all._

 

Janis and Regina had stopped trying to ruin each others’ lives after Cady’s whole prom stunt. But Janis had always chocked that up more to the halo brace than anything else. It had rendered Regina’s malice inert, and it just felt wrong trying to destroy a girl who couldn’t even turn her head to sneeze. It was less that they had made peace than they just completely disengaged. They had even managed to make it through the entirety of senior year without speaking a word to each other.

 

Regina and Cady catch up while Janis listens, watches and quietly resists any attempt to draw her into the conversation. She’s just starting to think that Regina seems to actually be interested in what Cady’s saying (even some of the college math-club stories that had bored Janis to tears), and that maybe she should make more of an effort when Cady spots Aaron coming down the stairs. She bolts, leaving Janis and Regina facing each other over a bowl of chex mix.

 

Janis is going to kill Cady when she gets back.

 

 

 

 

_Regina spent that spring vacation with her cousins in Ohio. The next week, when she walked down the hallways, all push-up bras and short skirts she could just barely walk in, most of their classmates did double-takes._

_Janis didn’t think she looked all that different, really (but maybe she’d been spending too much time looking recently). Anyway, Janis had gotten a pink streak in her hair over the break and if there was one thing she’d learned in the resulting fight with her mother, it was that she emphatically believed that people should be able to dress however they wanted._

_Other things were different too. Regina had a critiques of all of their classmates (Janis never gave a thought to what her criticism of her would be) and she talked about some guy on the football time constantly. Janis had never heard Regina mention this Kyle guy before. She was pretty sure Regina had never even talked to him before._

_Whenever she talked about her new clothes or how Gretchen Weiners had started asking her for guy advice, Regina looked down, almost like she was embarrassed by the stuff that was pouring out of her mouth. And Janis had to admit, that made dealing with this strange, hopefully temporary version of her best friend a little easier._

_When she talked about Kyle, though, Regina didn’t look down. Instead, she watched Janis’s face with the kind of concentration Janice was used to seeing when Regina was taking on a math test or trying to figure out a new chord on her guitar. Regina watched her so closely that Janis felt it like a hand putting pressure just below her ribs._

_It was weird. But things were weird enough_ _already_ _that she didn’t want to risk making it worse by asking._

_So instead, after yet another five minutes of not-listening to Regina talk about Kyle’s hair or arms or whatever, and pretending like having someone look at her face that hard was normal, Janis snapped her book shut and turned toward her friend._

_“Oh. My. God. Regina, we get it. He’s amazing” she drew out the last ‘a’ and laughed at the look on Regina’s face, like she’d been caught not paying attention in class._

_Regina composed herself quickly though, “I’m just saying that he’s got-“_

_Under the impending threat of another round of Kyle-worship, Janis snatched up a pillow and used it to knock Regina over, tumbling with her when she went down onto her back easier than Janis had expected. Janis landed with one hand one either side of Regina’s shoulders, hovering just over her face. And there were those damn freckles again, those same blown-wide pupils. She felt a jolt, like that pressure thing below her ribs had suddenly turned into a fist clutching tight on various squishy inner bits._

_Janis realized her mouth was gaping open and willed her lungs to get with the picture so her voice wouldn’t sound as breathy and moronic as she felt. She aimed for mocking nonchalance when she asked “Are you in love with him now?”_

_The look that flashed across Regina’s face looked like half a sneer, but before Janis could be sure it had disappeared and Regina had lifted herself up on an elbow, bringing her mouth to within a centimeter of Janis’s own and stopping there._

_Their breath mixed and Janis’ couldn’t figure out why she wasn’t moving backward, but her arms felt like lead and when they finally kissed she really wasn’t sure who’d made that last move forward._

_Regina’s lips were flavorlessly sweet and sticky from her lip-gloss, which was soon smearing all around the edges of her mouth. Janis was about to roll away when Regina put a hand on her hip. A sharp chill ran down her back. It scared her a little, but not in a way that made her want to stop. So instead, she reached up to wipe away some of the pink gloss with a thumb and made both girls giggle._

 

 

 

Regina smiles at her nervously and starts to pick pretzels out of the bowl “Are you still with Kevin?”

 

“No.” Janis deadpans, chin jutting like she’s daring Regina to comment.

 

“Oh, sorry, I didn’t mean-” Regina looks completely flustered and even a little nervous. Janis is taken a little aback-- she can’t remember the last time she saw Regina like this--  and she backpedals on her answer at top speed.

 

“No, no, it’s fine. He was going to school in LA, so we split up in the summer.” She tries offering a smile that almost feels sore. “No big deal.”

 

“Oh, right.” Regina says, the tension in her voice easing just a bit. “Is he coming back for the break, or,”

 

“No,” she says, wishing she could start an answer with something else, “He’s visiting family in India.”

 

“Then I guess he has all of us beat,” Regina says, looking around the room.

 

Janis surprises herself by laughing. “Yeah, I guess he does.”

 

 Regina points at her cup, “You need another drink?”

 

Janis grimaces slightly, and opens her mouth to answer, but Regina gets there first.

 

“I know where the liquor cabinet is upstairs if you’ve hit your Natty Light limit.”

 

“Of course you do,” Janis rolls her eyes.

 

“What was that?” Regina asks, cocking her head, one hand on her hip.

 

Janis holds both her hands up in mock placation, “Nothing, absolutely nothing.  Lead on.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

_Regina ran all her plans for her fourteenth birthday party by her cousin. Cassie was sixteen. She was dating the football captain of her school, her friends were the prettiest girls Regina had ever seen, and she always seemed to get whatever she wanted._

_“I was wondering if I should invite Kyle… but I mean it’s a pool party and it’ll just be girls… in their bathing suits. And then him. Would that be weird?”_

_“Oh, hun. The most important thing isn’t who you invite, it’s who you **don’t** invite.”_

 

_“What do you mean?”_

_“Seriously, are you retarded? It’s the oldest trick in the book. If you want people to care about your party, leave someone off your list. And make it worth talking about.”_

_“But-”_

_“Ryan’s here, gotta run, sweetie.” Cassie hung up before Regina could get another word out._

_Regina stared at her list for what felt like forever before putting a big X through the first name._

_After Janis’s mom called her house, Regina swore she wouldn’t ever listen to Cassie again. But she realized within a week she had no idea how to keep up this new act on her own. And Janis since had left the school completely; there wouldn’t have been any point in taking it back, even if she could._

Regina not only knew where the liquor cabinet knew was, she also knew how to mix an impressive number of drinks with its contents.

 

The dark and stormies got them through the obligatory catching up. They also got Janis to stop expecting unpleasant twists or traps in the conversation and eased Regina’s nervous fidgeting.

 

The Mexican martini got them reminiscing and laughing hysterically about the pranks they used to play on Janis’s older brothers. 

 

Fuck all, Janis thinks, if I have to tell Cady that things might actually have changed more than she’d ever admitted before.

 

By the time they were draining their rum and cokes they hit the topic they had both been avoiding all night. 

 

Janis can’t remember how exactly this came up (though she guesses it had to eventually) but suddenly Regina looks completely stricken.

 

“Seriously though, it worked out ok for me. The whole teen-angst, social- _ostracization_ thing.” The deer in the headlights look on Regina’s face would be funny if it didn’t tug at a spot just below her navel. “So, don’t, like, feel bad about it anymore. You know, if you did.”

 

Regina doesn’t say anything for a while. The bass is making the stairs they're sitting on vibrate and she hopes it will cover the way her hands are shaking.

 

“Sometimes I wonder what it would have been like if I’d just had the balls to tell people,” she pauses for the whole five seconds it takes for her to steal herself and lift her gaze from her cup to Janis’s face, “to tell people that _I_ was the big dyke.”

 

Once those words come out it’s like the last bits of tension eased out of her shoulders, which should be a good thing, but she still looks a little frightened of what she just said. 

 

Janis’s brain feels like its still trying to catch up with what’s going on here, but she starts stumbling through words anyway because it suddenly feels really important that Regina hear this.

 

“You know, about before, it wasn’t that I didn’t like…” she mumbles, “I mean, I just didn’t know…”

 

Clearly, she is not doing this right because Regina, if anything, looks more terrified.

 

“We don’t have to. Talk about it, I mean,” Janis says, trying to pump the breaks, to do whatever to get that look off Regina’s face.

 

“Yeah. Yeah, you’re right.”

 

But somehow Regina just looks disappointed, not relieved, and Janis is suddenly very thankful for the alcohol in her system telling her to cut to the fucking chase.

 

She leans forward, cupping Regina’s cheek with one hand and catching Regina’s lips with her own. Regina tenses, but she doesn't pull away. They’re still for what can’t be longer than a few seconds, but it seems longer than it is and Janis is just starting to worry when Regina begins to kiss her back. It’s hesitant and soft, closed mouthed at first, but Janis’s heart is hammering away regardless. She slides her hand down to the back Regina’s neck to pull her closer and she feels Regina’s lips part slightly more, her own hand snaking around Janis’s waist.

 

 

Janis breaks from the kiss, only pulling her face back far enough for her to see Regina clearly.

                                                                                         

“That was what I was, uh, failing at saying before.” Her own voice sounds lower and breathier than she’d expected.

 

Regina still looks half terrified, but she’s smiling and she lets Janis lead her by the hand a little further up the stairs, away from the few people who had noticed them.

 

At the top of the stairs Janis places her palms against the taller girl’s hips and presses her gently back against the wall. Janis kisses her slowly, trying to coax her out, but Regina still seems tentative.

 

Janis leans forward and her breasts and stomach brush, then press, against Regina’s. She moans, a lot louder than she means to, into Regina’s mouth and feels Regina’s stomach muscles jump against her own. Regina’s hands tighten on Janis suddenly and she pulls her closer. Regina’s kisses get more deliberate and her fingertips start running over the strip of bare skin where Janis’s shirt had ridden up. They get faster, fingers tangled in hair; hands cupped, first gently, then harder, against breasts; necks and ears peppered with kisses and nips. 

 

Janis hadn’t kissed a girl since Regina, but it was becoming pretty clear that Regina had. She somehow manages to put her hands, lips and teeth just where Janis needs them, making her skin feel like it was burning and her breath come ragged. Janis finds herself following Regina’s lead, mirroring the way she was being touched.  

 

And it was working, Regina was breathing fast against her ear, and Janis can feel her racing pulse when she kisses Regina’s neck; but Janis wants to feel like _she_ made that happen, entirely on her own.

 

Feeling the heat that’s been building between her own legs, she leans forward to press her thigh tight and high between Regina’s legs. Regina’s hand slips from her shoulder and she moans into the kiss while her hips buck forward. When they come up for air Janis has got that wicked grin, the one Regina had always associated with doing something that would get them in trouble but be totally worth it.

 

She pulls Regina back across the hallway into the bathroom and shuts the door behind them.

 

Regina has the button and fly of Janis’s jeans undone and the tips of her fingers hooked into her underwear when she leans back.

 

Regina’s lips are swollen, she’s breathing fast and it’s really not helping Janis be patient with the ache pounding between her legs.

 

“Are you ok with this?” she asks.

 

Janis delivers the ultimate ‘are you shitting me’ stare in response.

 

“No, I mean… I mean are you ok with it here. If people saw us come in here…”

 

Regina leaves the sentence hanging like the rest of it might hurt, but Janis laughs.

 

“They might, what? Call me a big lesbian?  At least this time I’d get to have the fun first.”

 

When Regina looks unsure how to respond, Janis reaches forward and undoes her fly. As she slides her palm down Regina’s stomach, fingers edging under the elastic of Regina’s underwear, Janis leans forward to whisper in her ear, “I’ve done the time.”

 

Her fingers curl to brush against where Regina was nearly as wet and hot as she felt, “Isn't there some saying about enjoying the crime?”

 

Regina inhales, sharp, almost like a hiss against her own ear and pulls Janis bodily against her. She starts kissing her as she tucks her hand down Janis’s pants and slides one, then two fingers into her, holding tight when Janis’s knees give slightly.

 

They build rhythms that match each other, fingers finding just the right angle and palms canting to give leverage just _there_ (Janis doesn’t mind following Regina’s lead here) until their kissing becomes panting and Regina comes, biting on Janis’ shoulder and just managing to keep her hand rocking until Janis crashes over the edge too.

 

 

 

 

The next morning Janis meets up with Cady and Damien for a grease-fest breakfast. 

 

It’s the only diner in town, and half of the people from the party are there battling hangovers with pancakes and bacon.

 

On her way to pay she passes a table of football players gone slightly to seed and hears snickering.

 

“Hey, Janis!” one of them calls, “You back to your old ways? I hear you were munchin’ Regina’s carpet last night.”

 

“Aw, are you jealous?” She asks, smiling as she leans over their table. “It’s ok, your mom was jealous too.”

 

She walks away before they can figure out just how many ways they could take that comment.

 

As she’s leaving the diner her phone vibrates. The number isn’t in her contacts, but that doesn’t matter.

 

The text reads ‘Got plans New Year’s?’


End file.
